


How to Raise Your Child to Not Have Health Anxiety During a Global Pandemic

by Amuly



Series: Loser Dads [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24555508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: Jean's sixth birthday falls during the great social-distancing time of 2020. Richie and Eddie conspire with the other Losers to give her the best quarantine birthday ever, while Eddie worries the global pandemic is ruining all the hard work he put intonotpassing along his health anxiety and panic disorder to his daughter.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Loser Dads [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774792
Comments: 24
Kudos: 137





	How to Raise Your Child to Not Have Health Anxiety During a Global Pandemic

As the bike whizzed past him, Eddie spun around, curses already on his lips. “It’s a side _walk_ , asshole!” he screamed. “For pedestrians! Bikes go in the fucking bike lane!”

The bicyclist didn’t even look back at him, racing down the sidewalk to knock over some other unsuspecting dad picking up his Sunday paper. Eddie cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted:

“There’s not even any cars on the fucking road! Everyone’s staying home! _Dick_!!”

Then Eddie turned around and saw that Jean and Richie were watching him from the porch. Eddie sighed. Their daughter was going to have the mouth of a sailor. A sailor raised by Comedy Central.

“ _Edward_ ,” Richie scolded. Eddie trudged up their front walkway, ready to accept his, granted entirely warranted, mocking dressing-down. “That’s not _appropriate language._ We _talked_ about this.”

“I know, I know,” Eddie grumbled. He met Jean’s eyes, who was giggling fiercely, delighted at getting to watch her father get in trouble. Yeah, laugh it up, kiddo. Just wait until the day _you_ messed up and a “shit” slipped out. Then she was in for the talking-to of a lifetime.

“We both _agreed_ ,” Richie continued, tone of his voice like some sort of easily-offended housewife, with just a little southern twang. Probably _Steel Magnolias_ subconsciously creeping into his bit. “Not in front of the b-a-b-y!”

“Well, Richie,” Eddie groused. He walked up their porch steps, though it didn’t bring him nearly level enough with Richie’s laughing eyes. “I tried, but sometimes a f-u-c-k-y-o-u just slips out.”

“Well maybe if you weren’t such an a-s-s-h-o-l-e-”

“At least I’m not a d-i-c-k.”

“Hey, in name-only!” Richie defended himself. “And better than being a whiney b-i-t-c-h.”

“F-u-c-k-y-o-u,”

“S-u-c-k my d-i-c-k.”

“Maybe later,” Eddie smirked. “If you’re good.”

Richie perked up. “Actually, could you f-u-c-k me d-o-g-g-y s-t-y-l-e and maybe s-l-a-p my a-s-s a little bit.”

Eddie paused, trying to catch up. He shook his head muzzily. “Wait. I got… I got ‘ass,’ but I missed the first… no, uh, the second…?”

“Sunday isn’t a school day!” Jean whined. She tugged at Richie’s leg. “Daddy! You said we were going to play baseball!”

“Right, right! Sorry! Sunday Funday, you’re right, kiddo.” Richie scooped Jean up easily, slinging her like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. She shrieked delightedly. “Let’s see how many you can hit into dad’s head, huh?”

Richie dropped a kiss to Eddie’s mouth as he passed by, and that bled the last of Eddie’s irritation at the cyclist out of him. Well. Most of it.

Eddie contented himself with making two cups of coffee and settling with them in the porch swing with his newspaper while Richie and Jean played something that couldn’t possibly be called ‘baseball’ except for its use of baseballs and, sometimes, a bat. But it more involved Richie juggling baseballs to Jean’s great delight and doing pratfalls every time she made contact between her bat and a ball. Then _she_ was trying to throw herself on the ground like Richie was, so he had to stop to teach her the safe way to fall. That quickly turned into Richie picking her up and bowling her across the front lawn. Eddie vaguely frowned at that, because the grass stains would be a nightmare to get out of her yellow shirt, but that was the price of having a six-year-old. And at least Richie was burning off her energy, which Eddie was eternally grateful for.

By the time husband and daughter returned to the porch, panting and sweaty and dirtier than Eddie thought was really necessary, Eddie had brought out a pitcher of (low-sugar) lemonade and turned Richie’s coffee into an iced latte for him. Jean guzzled at her lemonade, both hands held tight around her plastic _Dora_ mug.

“Hey Jean,” Eddie started. “You know, your birthday is coming up.”

Jean beamed. “I’m almost six!”

“Now you know you won’t be able to have friends over,” Eddie continued. He hated this, he hated it. But it had to be said. And he’d already talked with Stan and Patty, brainstorming what they could and couldn’t do.

Jean sighed dramatically but nodded. “I know. The pam-demic.”

“Pandemic,” Eddie corrected her absently. “Right. But we can still have a party. Just for you, and then you can get on the computer and see all your friends. You can even play some games with them. And they can send you your presents.”

“Okay,” Jean smiled. Then she frowned. “Do I still get a cake?”

“Of _course_ ,” Richie reassured her. “And you don’t have to share it with _anybody_. That’s almost _better_ than having your friends over, huh?”

“She can’t eat an entire cake by herself,” Eddie cut in.

“She’ll never know until she tries.”

“Richie.”

“ _Edward_.”

“Can I have cupcakes?”

“Sure,” Eddie replied quickly, because that was actually much easier to manage for portion-control. 

“Do you want anything else special?” Richie asked, because that was the real point of the conversation. “Like a theme? We could do Spider-Ham, or Dora the Explorer…”

“Can I have, can I have…” Jean jumped up from the porch, mouth sputtering as her excitement overwhelmed her ability to form proper words. She put her cup down on the porch and straightened up, flapping her hands. “Crypt- _og_ -raphy!”

Eddie stifled a groan, keeping his smile in place. Fuck. How the fuck were they supposed to throw a cryptography party for a six year old? This was all Patty’s fault, getting her that book on Ada Lovelace for Christmas-slash-Hanukah.

“That’s going to be the coolest party _ever_ ,” Richie enthused. He held his hand up for a high-five which Jean met exuberantly. “Hey: do you want to play in some dirt?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Jean hissed, rubbing her hands together.

“Go grab your shovel from the shed! We can dig for buried treasure in the backyard!”

Jean ran off, tearing around the side yard and scrambling through the open gate. Eddie sighed and leaned his head back against the porch swing. After a moment the swing dipped backwards, rocking as Richie joined him by his side.

“A cryptography birthday. For a six year old.”

“Under stay-at-home orders,” Richie added helpfully.

“What the hell kind of cupcakes am I supposed to make for a cryptography birthday?”

“Pinterest it,” Richie told him. “Pinterest always has an answer.”

“That’s true,” Eddie muttered. Pinterest was remarkably helpful for shit like this.

“And we can call up the others tonight. See if eight heads are better than two.”

“We should make Patty come up with all the activities,” Eddie grumbled. “This is all _her_ fault.”

“Yeah, how dare she get our daughter interested in math and solving puzzles.”

“At least she’s only six,” Eddie sighed. “Can you imagine trying to do this homeschool shit if she was in high school? With trig or calculus?”

“Don’t you do math every day?” Richie asked. “Isn’t your _job_ doing math?”

“Statistics!” Eddie shouted. “Actuarial tables and Monte Carlo simulations! I don’t remember the… the fucking quadratic formula, or whatever the hell-”

To the tune of _Pop Goes the Weasel,_ Richie started reciting, “x equals negative b, plus or minus square-root; b squared minus four-a-c… _all_ over _two_ a.” He blinked, as if coming out of a fugue state. “Holy shit. Is that right? Look that up. _Hey Siri_ -”

“Good, you can come up with… whatever the hell games we’re going to do for a _cryptography_ birthday party, then.” Eddie stared at the ceiling of their patio. “Riddles, I guess? We could do a… scavenger hunt? With puzzles?”

“ _Ooh_ , and the clubhouse can be the prize at the end!”

“Do a scenario, like she needs to solve a case-”

“Or it’s like, a _test_ , to see if she’s _ready_ to join the official cryptographers league of awesome cryptographers,” Richie enthused. “And then the clubhouse is her secret hideout where she can do all her cryptography work.”

“That’s actually incredible,” Eddie wondered.

“I think we’re awesome parents, dude.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Eddie whispered back.

They rocked on the swing in companionable silence for a minute. But even lazy Sunday mornings—approaching closer to midday with every passing minute—had their tasks to be seen to. Richie patted Eddie’s leg a couple times before he stood up.

“Alright. Time to trick our daughter into doing the weeding for me.”

“I love you,” Eddie stated, completely deadpan. But it made Richie grin brilliantly, almost like the first time (with less tears). Eddie received a kiss for his declaration, and then Richie was off, jogging around the side yard to supervise their daughter’s weeding efforts. Eddie watched him go, letting the warm feeling in his chest spread to his limbs, sitting there in that moment and noticing it, _feeling_ it, appreciating this beautiful Sunday morning, his incredible husband, their perfect little girl.

Then he tucked his newspaper under his arm, collected their drink cups and went inside to work on a client presentation for tomorrow that had already given him two migraines this week.

* * *

“This is your fault, Uris,” Richie bitched, jabbing his finger at the pinhole camera in the top of their desktop.

“Me?” Stan drawled.

“No, the better Uris,” Richie clarified. “Patricia, you absolute bitch, get ready to reap what you sow.”

“It’s _adorable_!” Patty cooed. “We can make a map, and puzzles, and…”

“Yeah, _we_ ,” Eddie gestured furiously between himself and Richie. “Actually _can’t_ do that. _We_ are not smart enough to make a bunch of… what the fuck even puzzles would they _be_? Morse code? Some… Da Vinci code shit?”

“We can do a little substitution cypher with a key hidden somewhere…” Patty was thinking out loud, already writing on presumably a pad of paper below the camera line.

“Like an escape room,” Ben added. “Except we get to use your whole house as the escape room.”

Richie snorted. “Oh excellent, it’s the great Escape Room disaster of twenty-eighteen all over again.”

“We got out!” Ben pointed out with a smile. But Eddie was already turning to Richie, jabbing his finger in his face.

“ _They told us not to touch the fucking lock, how was I supposed to know we were supposed to unlock it?!_ ”

“They just meant don’t rip it out of the wall!”

“ _He said not to touch it!!!!_ ”

“Yeah, and when I said, ‘hey Eds, why don’t we just _try_ the key in that lock, we’ve tried every _other_ lock in the room, what did _you_ say-’”

“ _He said not to fucking touch it it’s the fucking teen’s fault I was just following the fucking rules_!”

“Boys, boys,” Bev broke in. “Do you want Jean to have her perfect cryptography birthday or not?”

Eddie slumped back in his seat. It was _true_ though, that damn kid at the escape room—though, okay, maybe not relevant right this _second_.

“I could build a map of your house in my design program,” Ben offered. “And the surrounding yard. We could use that as a base for placing the clues.”

“Could you make it look like a pirate map?” Bev asked, eyes gleaming.

“She wants to be Ada Lovelace, not Anne Bonny,” Eddie reminded her.

Bev tsked. “She could like both! That girl has _depths_.”

“Steampunk,” Bill said. “That, you know, zeppelins and art deco and everything is b-brass.”

“Oh, like Bioshock,” Ben said. Bill snapped his fingers and pointed at him.

Richie was already thumbing at his phone. “Oh, yeah. Dude, look at these cupcakes.”

Eddie glanced at his phone. Oh, those were super cute. He wasn’t sure he was enough of a frosting artist to pull them off, but there were probably less complicated designs out that there retained the same aesthetic.

“Does it all have to be math or can it be riddles too?” Stan asked.

Eddie rubbed his forehead. “She’s six, so. Make it easy. She just got past phonetic reading like, this year.”

“I could give some of it a shot,” Mike offered. “Download some books from the online lending library—kids puzzles, you know. There’s tons of them out there, they used to get checked out all the time back in Derry.”

That was actually pretty smart. Instead of them doing all the work themselves, steal and modify some already-created age-appropriate puzzles. Why reinvent the wheel, and all that.

“Thanks, Mike. That sounds great,” Eddie replied.

“I can come by that night and help you set it up,” Stan told Richie. “Haul the clubhouse out of the garage, hide whatever Patty makes that needs hiding, if there’s scavenger hunt parts. If you guys make decorations for the lawn or something, I can help with that.”

“Yes, let’s do that,” Richie agreed. “Because I’m not carrying that fucking clubhouse out back all by myself, and I’m pretty sure my _hausfrau_ will be too busy making cupcakes to help.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, too.”

But then Eddie turned to the laptop. “Oh! We could hide the presents, her other presents, along with the clues. Like a progressive thing.”

“She’s got two dads, Eds,” Richie pointed out. “I think she’s plenty progressive already.”

“Like a _build up_ ,” Eddie hissed. “A new puzzle book after the first clue. A grease pen with the second clue. That dress Bev is making her for the third clue…”

“She’s going to look so _cute_ ,” Bev cooed.

“That’s actually awesome,” Richie agreed.

“I know it’s awesome, why the fuck do you think I said it?”

“I dunno, Eds, you say a lot of stupid shit sometimes.”

“Do I? Do I fucking _really_? You want to say that, right before we get in bed?”

Richie snorted. “Like you’d hold out on me.”

“I fucking _would_ , I _could-_!”

“Hey!” Bill shouted, cutting them off. “What about me?”

Richie and Eddie glanced at each other, even though they both knew they should probably fight against that impulse. On the screen, Bev coughed delicately and looked down, while Stan and Patty both wore mirroring, pitying smiles. They could see Bill’s eyes scanning over his laptop screen.

“Hey, wait! What _about_ me? W-what’s the problem?”

“Are you any good at puzzles?” Eddie pointed out, perfectly reasonably, he figured.

“I’m a best-selling author!”

Richie’s eyebrows shot up above his glasses. “Yeah, and you completely flubbed the fortune cookie wordle.”

“It wasn’t a- that’s not w-what a _wordle_ is?!” Bill squeaked.

“Still couldn’t solve it,” Richie giggled.

“It- Neither could you!”

“Your presents can be part of the scavenger hunt,” Eddie reassured him.

“But I’m a writer! I could help!”

“She doesn’t know the word ‘ _defenestrate_ ,’ Bill,” Richie told him.

“I could make it easy!”

“Remember the last time you talked to Jean?” Bev pointed out, gently. “At New Years?”

Bill blinked. “What was wrong with that?”

“You asked her if _Dora the Explorer_ felt like an offensive caricature of Latin-American culture or if the representation, although simplistic, was a net good for Hispanic children,” Stan said.

Bill hesitated. “Well… I wanted to get her opinion!”

“Her most complicated opinions on _Dora the Explorer_ is that she likes the monkey, Bill,” Patty said gently.

“I could _write something_ ,” Bill shouted. “Let me write something!”

“ _Fine_!” Eddie groused, throwing his hands up. “Write something! But I reserve the right to throw it out and let Patty write a new one if it gets too… _you_.”

“You know, it’s only because we’ve been friends since I could throw you in a trashcan that I’m letting you get away with that, Kaspbrak,” Bill threatened him.

Richie giggled and Eddie knew what he was going to say before he said he. He tried to stop it, but like there was ever any use- “Oh come on, Bill. You’ve been friends longer with Eddie than last week-!”

* * *

Through the miracle of “Well, I painted the fence last summer and they came in a multipack, so…” Eddie had a half-dozen N-95 masks just sitting around his tool shed. Which only served to make him feel about five percent better about his monthly grocery store outing. Richie and Jean got by with homemade masks Richie had bought off Etsy once the world was a little over a month into all this craziness. Jean’s was turquoise with a brass gear design repeating over it—very “steampunk,” if Bill was to be trusted. Richie had bought his from the same shop as an add-on, and of course he selected the option with pink dinosaurs all over it.

Okay, so maybe it was actually kind of cute.

That didn’t make Eddie feel much better about their once-monthly outings to the grocery store. He would have to take a Xanax just to fall asleep tonight and not be up stressing about “Is this a tickle in my throat? Richie, my throat is sore. Richie, I just coughed, I coughed, maybe I should go to the- No, I can’t go to the hospital, what if I catch it while I’m there, what if I _don’t_ have it and then I _catching_ it- No, see, my throat is getting more sore, maybe I _should_ go-” But it was okay. They were all okay. This would be just fine.

Once the car was safely in park, Eddie turned backwards in the driver’s seat. Jean was grinning up at him, hands cradling her mask in her lap.

“Alright, sweetie. Masks on.”

“Masks on!” Jean confirmed. With a maneuver that was far too practiced for a not-quite-yet six-year-old, Jean confidently slipped the elastics over both ears before tugging the mask securely above her nose and under her chin. She lifted her face to her dad for inspection.

“Turn,” Eddie told her, pointing to the left. She turned, then: “Turn,” turned again the other direction. No big bags, no tangles. Mask properly in place.

Eddie’s heart broke a little at that. She shouldn’t be _good_ at putting a mask on—not unless she’d been going through a phase where she hyper-focused on being a medical doctor, or something. Eddie had been so worried before they had adopted her that he would ruin any kid the state was stupid enough to hand over to him. That he’d do what his mother did, that he wouldn’t be able to _help_ it: that every time his kid had a cold, or a cut, or a bruise—which kids got! All the time! And didn’t even remember how they got them!—he’d overreact. And just by watching him, even if he wasn’t as bad as his mother, even if he didn’t make _up_ illnesses for his kid, his child would still learn to be… scared. That the world was a dangerous place and the proper response to that was high-strung anxiety. Because kids imitated their parents, didn’t they? _I learned it from watching you, Dad!_ and all that. Eddie had been so sure he was going to pass on his health anxiety and panic disorder and whatever the fuck else you could diagnose him with to his child, biological or not.

But then it had been okay. For two years, Eddie had done the parenting thing okay. Not to say he never screwed up: he fucking screwed up. _All the time_. But not with that. Oh, his heart was running around outside his chest, _especially_ when Jean started kindergarten last year. But he (and Richie) could manage that. And it never seemed to rub off on Jean. Well… Not to the point of messing her up. Not yet, anyway.

And then twenty-twenty came along, and fucked everything up. Eddie’s management of his anxiety, a normal school routine for their little girl, Richie’s entire tour schedule… everything. And Eddie was having to teach Jean to wash her hands for two ‘Happy Birthday’s’, and how to put on a mask, and to _never_ touch anything while they were out of the house, hands in _pockets, Jean-!_ And Eddie was so, so sure that he’d lost. He’d battled for two years to make sure he didn’t mess up little Jean the way he’d been irrevocably messed up, and then the world twisted around their happy little family and he’d… lost.

On the other hand Jean had adapted to everything with easy good humor. Eddie wasn’t sure how she or the other children her age would come out of this, what sort of habits and neuroticisms they would naturally pick up, but then again, he didn’t know how _any_ of them were going to come out of this. Maybe it was easier for the children in some ways: they were fast to adapt to new circumstances. But maybe in a year he wouldn’t be saying that. After all, a year to a six-year-old was almost twenty percent of her _life_. A year to him or Richie was… decidedly less than that.

Richie turned to Eddie, his pink dinosaurs mask firmly in place and tilted his head around. “Is mine on right, Daddy?”

Eddie shot him a _look_ at the name. Then he slapped at Richie’s hand, creeping across the center console of the Cadillac.

“It’s fine.”

“Are you _sure_?” Richie leaned in, eyes sparkling behind his glasses. “Can you check for me, Dadd-”

“Let’s go!” Eddie announced. Then he turned around and caught Jean’s eyes. “Wait.”

She nodded, unbuckling her seatbelt but then placing her hands patiently in her lap.

After securing his own N95 mask, Eddie made his way around the car to Jean’s door. He opened it and she hopped out, knowing better than to stray far in the busy parking lot. Way _too_ busy, as a matter of fact: what the fuck were all these peopled doing out? It was a Thursday morning. Go the fuck home and self-isolate, you assholes. This wasn’t a _social_ hour.

“Remember, hand in pocket,” Eddie told Jean as he grabbed her left hand in his right. Jean nodded and dutifully shoved her right hand into the pocket of her overalls. She held tight as they started across the parking lot together as a family unit.

“Hey!”

Eddie slammed to a stop, so taken aback by _that_ tone coming out of his little daughter’s mouth.

“Jean? What is-”

“Hey! You should have a mask! There’s a… pam-edic!”

“Pandemic,” Eddie corrected absently. But mostly he was looking around in faint embarrassment, until he finally located the person his daughter was _apparently berating_ , in a Publix parking lot. It was a middle-aged white guy, who either hadn’t yet noticed his tiny critic or was ignoring her. Eddie tugged at Jean’s hand and shushed her.

“Jean, sweetie, you can’t talk to people like that.”

Her big green eyes peered up at Eddie above her mask, sparkling with righteous indignation. “But everyone has to wear a mask to keep people safe from the germ and he’s not keeping people safe-”

“Yes, yes, but you can’t make him be safe, you can only keep yourself safe, okay? And leave the yelling at grown-ups for your dads, okay?”

“Uh, pretty sure you mean leave it to _you_ , specifically,” Richie pointed out.

“Oh like you’re a model of social graces and impulse control,” Eddie grumbled.

Richie gasped, mock-affronted. “Eddie! Not in front of the b-a-b-y!”

Jean giggled. “That spells ‘baby!’” she announced.

“Shut up and grab a cart,” Eddie told Richie.

“Daddy! Daddy! That spells ‘baby!’”

There was a Publix attendant wiping down the carts for them. Still, Eddie pointed with his eyes at the provided Clorox wipes and Richie sighed as he grabbed some, wiping down the cart a second time.

“Daddy! B-A-B…. Y, that spells ‘baby!’”

“Yup, Jean,” Eddie finally replied, voice high in the tone he knew he got when he was faking impressed by Jean’s accomplishments. Luckily she hadn’t seemed to catch on yet. “Very good, that’s right.”

“Hey! You have to wear a mask-!”

“Hey Jean-bean, let’s play a game,” Richie announced, blessedly cutting Jean off before she could try to start _another_ fight not three feet inside the Publix. Eddie breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled on his non-latex gloves.

“Why don’t we play the A-B-C game?” Richie continued.

Eddie would marry him all over again. Here, in this COVID-19 infected Publix.

Okay, maybe not _here_ , but-

“Apples!” Jean shouted.

“Not-uh! Doesn’t count until you can see them!” Richie reminded her. Jean couldn’t even pout, she was too excited craning her neck to look for the produce section, even as she kept one hand securely gripping Eddie’s slacks.

They weren’t just here for their monthly (downgraded from weekly, because Eddie wanted to put as much time between trips as possible) grocery run: they were here because Jean’s birthday was next week and, in spite of it having to be a quarantine birthday, Eddie was determined to make his daughter’s sixth birthday a magical one.

“ _Freencch_ onion soup!” Richie declared, pointing at the item on the store shelf. “What comes after ‘f?’”

“ _A… b… c…_ ” Jean muttered under her breath. Eventually she declared “G!” and started hunting around the aisle, one hand still tight on Eddie’s pant leg. Eddie squinted at the soup stocks, looking for the low-sodium ones he cooked his fennel in.

He heard Richie make a noise behind them, then the scuffing of shoes over linoleum. A second later a grocery cart pulled up on his left, practically bowling Jean over as she scanned the shelves for something that started with the letter “G.”

“Six feet, asshole!” Eddie shouted at the greying man who shoved his way past them in the aisle. Then he winced. “I mean-”

Jean giggled. Richie gave him a look.

“You were saying?”

“Shut the fudge up,” Eddie grumbled. “ _You’re_ the one with the ‘Trashmouth’ moniker. This is at _least_ equal responsibility.”

In the frozen foods aisle Richie was muttering to himself “we should just skip ‘j,’ we’re already past _Jiff_ …” when a young couple started down the aisle towards them. Eddie growled and scooted Jean around to his other side, scrunching in as close to the freezer doors as they could.

“Flow of traffic!” Eddie shouted at the young couple. “Follow the fudging arrows, it’s supposed to be idiot-proof! Take two steps and go down the aisles on _either_ side of this one, and then come back up!”

Richie pointed at Eddie’s forehead (though he was careful not to actually touch him). “Does ‘jerk’ count?”

Jean giggled loudly. “No, because you said last time ‘Jean’ doesn’t count! That’s rules!”

“She’s your daughter when she says stuff like that,” Richie told Eddie.

“You’re the one who didn’t want to give her the points for ‘Jean,’” Eddie pointed out.

“Put your mask on your nose!” Jean shouted. Another person was trying to come down the aisle the wrong way towards them, a grey-haired little old lady who was, indeed, wearing her mask below her nose. Eddie tried to smile with his eyes to placate the woman, but he probably just looked insane. He sighed and resisted the urge to press his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Maybe he explain to Jean that some people had medical exemptions to mask-wearing? But if he did _that_ she might start loudly asking strangers what was wrong with them. Catch twenty-two of social awkwardness, which one would he rather?

Luckily they only did this once a month.

* * *

Eddie didn’t realize how late it had gotten until he heard Richie stirring in their bed. Only then did he glance at the clock on his laptop and realize, shit, it was two am.

“Eds?”

“Sorry,” Eddie told him, shutting his laptop and setting it on the armchair he’d been curled up in next to their bedroom window. “I’m done, I’m done.”

In their bed Richie turned away, snuffling into his pillow “’S’okay,” he mumbled, probably drooling away. “Jus’ looking for you.”

“I’m here,” Eddie reassured him, slipping back under the covers on his side of the bed (closer to the window, further from the door. Richie always put himself between Eddie and the door, no matter where they slept). He slipped his arms around Richie’s back and Richie arched into him instinctively, sighing happily into his pillow. Eddie kissed the back of his neck and earned himself a happy grunt. “Sorry.”

“’S’okay,” Richie repeated.

“I was working on party stuff,” Eddie admitted.

“Figured.”

Eddie tried to hold still, then. Fall asleep. Let himself relax, with Richie’s warmth at his front, his ass pressed to Eddie’s groin, his shoulders hunched up into Eddie’s chest, his too-long quarantine hair tickling Eddie’s nose. But try as he might, Eddie just couldn’t turn his brain off that quickly. Not when he’d been slowly spiraling for hours, which he was only just realizing now that he didn’t have an outlet for his anxious energy.

“Richie?” Eddie whispered, half-hoping Richie was already asleep.

But Richie shifted back against him, hips rolling slowly against Eddie’s groin. “Snnf?” he mumbled. “Is it sleepover talk time or sex time?”

“Sleepover talk,” Eddie admitted. Though, if Richie wanted to distract him from sleepover talk _with_ sex, he might take it, right now. Maybe at least it would help him fall asleep?

But Richie scooted himself around so he was facing Eddie, even though he was yawning his way through it and barely could keep his eyes open. Was, in fact, not even trying to keep his eyes open—not that it would make much of a difference, without his glasses on.

“Shoot, babe.”

“It’s her first birthday with us,” Eddie spilled out in one breath.

“No it’s not, we had her birthday-”

“As ours,” Eddie whispered.

Richie fell quiet after that.

They’d had her for a year and a half, almost two, before the adoption went through. They were fostering her before, even though they knew from the moment she was placed with them that she was meant to be theirs. So yes, they’d had her fifth birthday last year, and went all-in on the _Paddington_ themed birthday party, complete with triangle-cut finger sandwiches and afternoon tea (that was actually hot cocoa, because tea was “gross” and she was a fiend for hot cocoa) and an adorable giant blue princess dress topped off with a red bucket hat and custom build-a-bears for every child who attended (which was most of her pre-K class).

But this was supposed to be her first birthday as a _Tozier_. As their daughter, as a complete family: Eddie, Richie, and baby Jean made three. Her first birthday with them where there was no threat that she could be taken away from them, her first birthday after she’d been calling them both “daddy” for the past year, now, because they _were_ her daddies, because they always _would_ be.

“I wanted it to be perfect,” Eddie whispered.

He didn’t realize he was crying until Richie’s thumb reached up to swipe the tears from his cheek.

“It’s going to be perfect,” Richie reassured him. “She’s going to get to eat cupcakes in front of her computer while all her friends watch her. What could be better?”

Eddie laughed a little brokenly, sniffing back any more tears.

“I’m being ridiculous,” he chided himself.

“Yeah you are, but it’s okay,” Richie reassured him. He yawned. “She’s going to have a great birthday, even if she can’t have any of her friends over. And even if she _does_ have a meltdown-”

Eddie giggled a little wetly, remembering the plenty of times he had to choose from, because even if she was their perfect little angel, she was also a five-going-on-six-year-old, and meltdowns were a fact of life.

“Even _if_ ,” Richie continued, “It will still be perfect, because we love her, and she loves us, and when we’re looking over the scrapbooks together with her when she’s home from medical school and brought a nice boy with her so we’re trying to embarrass her as much as possible, she’ll see the pictures and remember how much her dads had tried to make her sixth birthday special, even in the middle of a global pandemic.”

“I know,” Eddie sniffed.

“Alright.” Richie snuffled closer and pressed a kiss off-center on Eddie’s face, hitting somewhere below his eye and on the side of his nose. Eddie grabbed his jaw and tugged him in for a real kiss, because he needed one right now. Luckily, Richie never failed to deliver.

“Okay?” Richie asked. “Or do I need to blow you or something? Because I can try, but fair warning, I might fall asleep halfway-”

He had started to make like he was disappearing beneath the covers. Eddie snorted and smacked at him, tugging at him to hold him in place.

“No, Richie, stop, no. _No_. I’m fine, I’m fucking fine. I’m just being a headcase.”

“ _My_ headcase,” Richie said, so warmly that Eddie could almost believe it _was_ a term of endearment.

Then Richie rolled over, snuggling his bum backwards just enough to cuddle up. Eddie sighed and hugged at him, nose pressed to Richie’s shoulder. He smelled good: clean and like himself, like he’d been sweating lightly in the hour or so of dozing sleep he’d gotten while Eddie stayed up late, worrying the night away. He smelled so good that if they hadn’t grown up together and defeated an interdimensional space clown, Eddie felt like they still would have ended up together, if he had just been given the chance to meet Richie in passing one time, because every neuron in Eddie’s brain lit up with _good, good, good_ when he inhaled that particular bouquet of pheromones and musk and whatever the hell else that uniquely identified _Richie_.

To be clear, Eddie knew he was a big sap. Not as big a sap as Richie, because who _could_ be, the man cried once because Eddie brought him an iced latte while he was in crunch mode working on a show pilot. But the smell thing, it wasn’t just him being sappy. Richie really did just smell _that_ good to Eddie. It was infuriating. It was perfect.

“Sleep,” Richie mumbled. “Sleeeeep.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Eddie reassured him. Then he breathed deep.

* * *

The mixer was so fucking _loud_ ; why were mixers so fucking _loud_?! There was no way Jean was going to sleep through this, fuck, _fuck_.

“She’s a heavier sleeper than Bill,” Richie reassured him, jogging past Eddie currently in cupcake hell to dip into the fridge. He emerged with two bottles of water. Before heading back out, he stopped to drop a kiss on Eddie’s lips. He tasted like the humidity of a summer night in Georgia. It was nice, actually. “She’s not going to wake up.”

“How’s it going?” Eddie asked him. He glanced at the clock on the oven. Another five minutes on the buttercream frosting.

“Great.” Richie beamed. “Another hour, we should be done.”

Eddie nodded, glancing into the mixer. Four more minutes: leave it alone. It wouldn’t have the right consistency if he fucked with it.

“Hey.”

Eddie blinked and refocused. Richie was smiling softly at him, sweat beading on his forehead, hair sticking straight up some places and plastered flat others.

“Huh?”

“It’s going to be perfect.”

Eddie swallowed. Quickly he rearranged his features into a scowl, though not fast enough to fool Richie. “If you call a virtual birthday where she can’t even be with her friends ‘perfect,’ okay…”

“Stan and Patty and the baby will be here. At a safe distance, but. And she’ll get to see all her friends on the computer. Kids are rubber like that. She’ll have a great time.” Richie leaned in and pressed another kiss to Eddie’s mouth. “And, you know, if she doesn’t, we’ll buy her an iPad or something. Spoil the shit out of her. What do kids like? A car? Is she old enough yet?”

“Get back to work,” Eddie ordered him, fighting back a smile.

“Puppy? If it’s a disaster we get her a puppy?”

“ _Go_.”

Richie started away, but then he suddenly scurried back, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s waist. He squatted a little so he could bring their hips into alignment.

“Wait! Kids always want a little brother or sister, right? Maybe we can start trying after I’m done tonight. Get a head start on it.”

“First good idea you’ve had all night,” Eddie told him. “Now hurry the fuck up or I’ll be too tired to impregnate you until tomorrow.”

“Shit, and tonight’s the last night I’m ovulating,” Richie swore. He peppered Eddie with kisses. “Better hurry, then.”

He darted off, water bottles in one hand, waving the other back at Eddie as he escaped through the back door. Eddie watched him as he went, eyes trained on that one big hand easily wrapped around both water bottles. Damn. Richie had great hands.

Frosting! Eddie shook himself and turned back to the mixer, eyeing the “peaks” in the frosting. Did they look firm enough? Should he stop the mixer to check or would that ruin the consistency? Shit, shit.

* * *

The five of them sat on the back deck, Jean long gone in her own little world of code breaking and zeppelins powered by brass computers. Or whatever exactly she was picturing when she played games with Ada Lovelace, number one imaginary friend. It was too hot to be sitting so close but Richie still leaned against Eddie on their patio couch, while Stan and Patty sat in the couch on the opposite end of the deck, little baby Asher asleep in his car seat with the sun cover pulled all the way down. He’d already gotten his ten minutes of sun earlier during the festivities—prescribed by the doctor to clear up a little bit of baby jaundice.

Eddie loved that little baby—almost as much as he loved Jean. _Almost_ (it was almost enough to make him want another one. _Almost._ …Well, if Richie really wanted one…).

“Thank fuck, she loves it,” Richie breathed, staring out over the backyard to where Jean was ensconced inside her giant new clubhouse that Stan and Richie had somehow assembled overnight (with Ben playing job foreman over iPad).

“Of course she does, it’s awesome,” Eddie told him. He took a long swig at his beer, dark bitter IPA doing its best to counterbalance the grimy sweetness of the half a cupcake Eddie had split with Richie. After Richie ate three cupcakes by himself, of course.

“I don’t know how I’m going to top Ada Lovelace,” Patty mused, one finger tapping at her chin. “I still can’t believe she didn’t take to Anne Bonney…”

“She’s too girly for that right now,” Richie reminded her, an old discussion they’d hashed out many times. “Ada Lovelace wore the big dresses. You gotta pick someone with a big dress. Otherwise it’ll never catch on. Plus, you’ll make Bev cry.”

“Bev would love to make a little pirate outfit for Jean,” Patty shot back.

“I’m still waiting for her to pick up a comic book and realize why you keep calling her ‘Dark Phoenix’ whenever she throws a tantrum,” Stan teased.

“She’d have to get better at reading first,” Eddie said.

“That’s what the pictures are for,” Stan countered.

In a burst of flailing limbs and navy crinoline, Jean scrambled back onto the deck, making a beeline straight for the lemonade pitcher on the patio table. She beamed at Patty and Stan but kept a respectful distance from them. It broke Eddie’s heart to see that, but. Temporary. All this would be over soon. Kids were flexible. She’d barely even remember when there was a time when you weren’t supposed to touch, and masks were how you left the house.

After she took a long, child’s draught from her plastic cup—the kind where she breathed hard through her nose into her cup between swallows—Jean smacked her lips and turned to her fathers.

“Daddy, can you come play Charles Cabbage now?”

“Babbage,” Patty reminded her.

Richie pointed at Eddie. “Daddy?”

“Who’s daddy? You’re daddy, too,” Eddie shot back, even though Jean had been talking to him.

“ _You_ Daddy,” Jean sighed in exasperation, entirely over this joke that Richie and Eddie went through at least once a week.

Hiding his reluctance at having to cram himself into the kids-sized playhouse behind a smile, Eddie took another sip of his beer before standing. He slapped his palms to his thighs.

“Okay, Jeanie. What am I supposed to do?”

Jean beamed and grabbed his hand, dragging him down to the playhouse. “You’re the _inventor_ ,” she explained. “But I’m the _programmer_. So you have to build the stuff and then I tell you how it works. Look, come on!”

Later that evening Jean was dozing in Richie’s lap while Eddie and Richie teamed up to tell Patty _wildly_ exaggerated stories about her husband’s trouble-making days.

“And then, and then!” Eddie gasped, laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. “He had to look Jennifer in the eye and say: ‘There was a spider in your hair.’”

“ _No_ ,” Patty gasped. Stan was looking shamefaced down at his beer. “But when did she find out?”

Richie shrugged. “First bathroom break? When her friends told her? Definitely by the end of the school day because she was out for _blood_.”

Patty cackled. “Did you get beat up by a _girl_?” she teased her husband.

But Stan smiled, eyes flickering up to Richie. “Nope,” he popped the ‘p.’ “I told her I didn’t do it. Must’ve been someone else.”

“And she _believed_ you?”

“Well, sure. I was the good one.”

Eddie gasped, curling his hand holding his beer bottle to his chest. “ _Hey_! I was a good one, too! I had an inhaler and a fanny pack, you didn’t get any more of a good boy than that!”

“You fudging kidding me, Eds? You got into more shoot than any of us,” Richie snorted.

“Only because of _you_!” Eddie shouted.

“Bull-poop, you started half of it,” Richie told him. “Remember that time Bowers spit on you and you practically gutted him with your metal ruler?”

Oh, yeah. He’d _forgotten_ about that. “Fudge, I sliced up his leather jacket, that’s right.”

“See, Eddie could get _away_ with stuff,” Richie explained to Patty. “That made him a hundred times more dangerous than _me_ , who always looked like he was getting in trouble even when he _wasn’t_.”

“Still, I barely ever did anything really bad,” Eddie countered. “I was too scared of getting in trouble! If I did anything bad it was because _you_ talked me into it.”

Stan snorted into his beer. “What about Mallory?”

Eddie’s face flushed. Oh, _fuck_. He’d repressed that one.

Richie’s head whipped around to look at Eddie, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Mallory? Mallory who?”

“Mallory nobody,” Eddie growled, trying to stare down Stan. Somehow it didn’t _work_.

“Mallory Santorelli,” Stan smirked. “In fifth grade? When she stole your fanny pack?”

“She was… it was self-defense! She was squeezing all my inhaler into the air! I could have _died_ if she wasted it all and then I had an asthma attack!”

“Except, you didn’t have asthma,” Richie pointed out. He waved his hand, jarring Jean to wakefulness as he did.

“Okay, well, you know, I thought I did.”

“Wait, so what did he do?” Patty asked her husband. Stan’s eyes twinkled over his beer bottle. Eddie made a cutting gesture at his throat.

“ _Nothing_.” Eddie jerked his head at Jean who was blinking muzzily up at the grown-ups talking. “Nothing at all, I always respected the rules and violence isn’t the _answer_ -”

“He threw her into a trashcan,” Stan announced with no small delight.

“ _What_?!” Richie squealed. “ _Eddie_! I had no _idea_ -!”

“I just shoved her-”

“Little Edward Kaspbrak going on Lou Ferrigno on some ten-year-old Mean Girl-”

“Shut up, shut up,” Eddie shouted. “No, that’s _not_ how it was, you’re such a-” he glanced at Jean, “… an… S-O-B.”

“S-O-B,” Jean spelt out dutifully. Her face screwed up. “ _Sss…ohhh…bbuhhh._ What’s a sohb?”

“Sob,” Eddie rushed to answer, shooting daggers at Richie as he smirked. “It’s another word for ‘crying.’”

Jean’s head tilted to the side as she considered this. “Oh: well that makes sense. Daddy cries all the time.”

Richie clutched at his heart, falling backwards on the couch and taking Jean with him. “Betrayed! By my own daughter! Right through the heart!”

Jean giggled as she struggled against Richie’s grasp, eventually scrambling loose enough to sit on top of his chest, proudly, like she’d had something to do with it.

When Stan, Patty, and baby Asher left Richie, Eddie, and Jean had to say goodbye from their front walk, standing six feet back from the Uris clan and staring meaningfully at them, like somehow if they looked over in the right sort of way they could achieve the same emotional connection as a hug. To make up for it, Eddie gathered Jean up in his arms and hugged her extra tight as they made their way back into their house.

At least with no swarm of screaming six-year-olds, there was no mess to pick up. Just some leftover cupcakes to drop into a Tupperware and an order to Miss Jean to “find a home for all your new presents!” Half of them had already made their way out to her new clubhouse anyway, or she was wearing them, so Jean was able to dutifully cart armfuls of new books and toys back to her bedroom in only two trips. Then it was bath time, no, put your toys _away_ , no, you can play with them more in the morning, half a meltdown, and finally Eddie, nodding off against Richie’s shoulder as he read Jean her bedtime story.

“Eddie. Eds.”

Eddie jerked awake, Richie’s hand wrapping around his forearm to keep his movements to a minimum. As he blinked the sleep from his eyes Eddie saw Jean, eyes closed, fists bunched up tight around her Ada Lovelace dress that she _insisted_ she be allowed to sleep with. Silently Richie stood up to put Jean’s book away in the basket of bedtime books that was a hanging fixture next to her bed. Eddie crept over to press a kiss to Jean’s forehead, smoothing damp hair away from her face as he did. Richie appeared beside him, dropping his own kiss to Jean’s hair, then straightening to lean too heavily against Eddie as they stared down at her together. Jean, all tuckered out from her birthday. Their _daughter_ , asleep on her _birthday_. Eddie grabbed Richie’s arm and Richie grabbed it back, so they were holding onto each other as they watched Jean’s little chest rise and fall beneath her nightgown.

Eventually they tip-toed their way out of Jean’s bedroom, Richie careful to leave the door cracked for her like she insisted. Richie and Eddie changed into boxers and brushed their teeth together, puttering around their master bedroom like a couple of old men. It was only nine o’clock, after all, but they _had_ been up half the night before getting everything exactly right for Jean’s scavenger hunt birthday surprise.

Richie slipped into bed a couple minutes after Eddie, after using the bathroom. He snuffled into Eddie’s side, shoving his nose against his armpit. Eddie was half-hard, because proximity to Richie and lying down in bed did that to him, like a Pavlovian reaction. But he wasn’t sure if either of them were up to a full-on fucking right now. Maybe a couple lazy handjobs. Eddie lifted his head to glance at Richie’s nightstand, checking to see if their lube was sitting on top or tucked away. Sitting on top, because Richie was too lazy to put _his_ toys away, even as they tried to teach their daughter better habits.

Their _daughter_. Eddie pressed a kiss to the top of Richie’s head, smoothing a hand up and down his back as he sat in the moment, feeling the rush of pride and joy and contentment and also fear and anxiety and worry wash over him. Feel the emotions, his therapist said. Sit in them. Acknowledge them without doing anything about them. Learn that you could feel these things and not _have_ to do anything.

Richie yawned into his armpit. His fingers reached down to tickle at Eddie’s boxers. “Want a handie?”

Eddie laughed and shoved Richie towards the lube, yanking his boxers down to his knees under the covers. They had nine, maybe ten hours before Jean woke up and it started all over again. Best make good use of their alone time.


End file.
